Tennis is one of the most popular sports of recent times. More people are playing tennis now than ever before, and there are more tennis tournaments than ever before.
As with any sport, tennis requires practice to perfect the proper stroke for any portion of the game. As has been well documented, a most effective method of practice includes actually hitting tennis balls.
A practice session in which balls are actually hit may involve as many as one hundred balls. Each ball struck must be retrieved after the session ends.
Retrieving practice tennis balls is a time consuming and tedious task which may deter, if not at least inhibit, many players from spending enough time practicing to significantly improve their game.
For this reason, the art has included several devices which are intended to assist a player in collecting tennis balls.
However, while somewhat effective in achieving the overall purpose of making collection of tennis balls more efficient than simply picking them up by hand, these devices are often difficult, complicated and time consuming to install in the first place. Thus, the drawbacks associated with setting up the device are simply substituted for the above-mentioned problems of simply picking up the balls.
Still further, the collection devices often merely collect the balls or do not return them to a location which is convenient to the player. Requiring the player to move a great distance to retrieve a tennis ball vitiates the advantages of such devices.
Therefore, there is a need for a tennis ball returner which is easy to set up, yet will return balls to a player in a manner which reduces the movement required of the player to retrieve the returned ball to a minimum.